


Freefall

by justanotherStonyfan



Series: Hydra Trash Meme 2014 ongoing - blanket dub/non consent warnings [12]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Asexual Steve Rogers, BDSM, Forced Orgasm, HYDRA Trash Party, HYDRA Trash Party adjacent, M/M, Mentions of past noncon, Rape Recovery, Restraints, Sex Toys, Sub Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:47:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23615458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanotherStonyfan/pseuds/justanotherStonyfan
Summary: Free:/friː/able to act or to be done as one wishes; not under the control or supervision of anotherFall:/fɔːl/to a controlled act of falling; become detached and drop down; to yield and be captured or defeatedFreefall:/friːfɔːl/a rapid descent that cannot be stopped
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: Hydra Trash Meme 2014 ongoing - blanket dub/non consent warnings [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/116107
Comments: 22
Kudos: 88





	Freefall

**Author's Note:**

> Written fr ZepysGirl, who said ‘I want a full fic of Steve nonchalantly reading a book while Bucky tires himself out~’ and triggered my trashbrain for the first time in two years. I didn't post this when I wrote it but I'm posting it now in the hopes that it'll provide a distraction for those stuck inside because of the quarantine - particularly those of us stuck inside with people whose beliefs differ from our own. 
> 
> As always this is viewer discretion advised. This is an HTP Adjacent fic, i'm using both tags 'cause I know my audience. Please heed tags. Mentions of past noncon.
> 
> This is unbeated as usual and unproofread because I am so very tired right now. If you notice anything I haven't tagged for, please hmu on tumblr at justanotherstonyfan because I'm more likely to see it quickly there.

Unobtrusive as a ticking clock or a dripping tap, it's there on the edge of what he's doing and thinking, but easily ignorable. Whether small mechanical whine and a deeper thud, gears and motors, or humming and buzzing, and it's nothing, really, that he doesn't hear in his day-to-day life. When you live in a futurist's utopia, you grow accustomed to the movements of machinery, the workings of day-to-day appliances, custom built or not. And when you live with a guy who's always been as confident and outgoing as Bucky’s relearned how to be most of the time, you learn to ignore all the kind of noise other people might find impossible to think past.

The book Steve holds is heavy, and it's one of those things a tablet can just never emulate. It's why he still buys books, really – the pages still smell of paper, the ink still smells of ink, the smells still cling to fingertips that yearn for the texture. It's not the same, but it's close enough. The written word was made to be cradled in one's palms like a precious thing.

 _“Huuuuuuhn,”_ Bucky says, and Steve turns the page, _iconic demonstration of this revolves around an unlikely object – the marshmallow._

The irony of having reached the chapter on delayed gratification doesn't escape him, and he rubs his fingertips together, frowns at them. They're getting dry – his skin will start to split if he's not careful, and so he casts about for the hand cream. It's on the dresser, so he gets up and goes to pick it up.

Bucky makes another little noise over where he is, but he's not addressing Steve so it doesn't matter.

Steve doesn't need much of the cream – it's good stuff, will stop his nails splitting and his cuticles cracking (the serum would never allow it but it’s another small comfort he gives himself, like warm socks or sugar in his tea on the rare occasions he drinks it). 

He goes over to Bucky and takes a look at Bucky's hands, leans right down to see and says,

“Hmm.”

Bucky’s hands are currently tied together at the small of his back, but Bucky's fingers are just as healthy as Steve’s, so Steve does his own hands and then settles back into his chair. Bucky's top half is flat on the bed, perpendicular to the headboard because they're both on the long side of the bed, and his face is mainly pressed to the mattress. The bed's too tall for him to kneel on the ground so, instead, his ankles have been tied to the legs of the bed and he's having to bend his knees. It's mainly so Steve can make sure he's got it right.

“Still in the right place?” he says, grabs the flared base and moves the plug just to check, pushes the base down, lifts the base up and- “ah, there,” Steve says as Bucky's toes scrabble, “you moved it, huh? That’s why you oughta stay still. Ain’t that what I said?”

Bucky's legs try to straighten but he doesn't have the leeway for that.

Steve settles back into his chair.

“Uhn, uhhhhnn,” Bucky says, and Steve leans his book against his chest and looks at him - bent legs, bare ass, head down, hands back.

“Come on, Buck, I've read this sentence about eight times,” he says. “it's good stuff, too, this is about that marshmallow test they did in the sixties. Listen: _In the 1960s, Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel developed-_ Huh? You say somethin'?”

He knows Bucky didn’t speak but it’s an excuse to give Bucky the once-over. He reaches out, presses one ass cheek first, lifts it a little, then the other. Seems okay but-

“No, you look okay to me. Should I- Oh!” he says. “Jeez, would'ja look at that? I _thought_ that thing'a yours had another bit to go with it.”

He's picks up a small cylindrical piece of plastic with a little button on it. It has a wire that runs from the end of it and ends in what looks like a headphone jack. The button's lit up red but the thing doesn't appear to do anything – except that there's a matching hole in the base of Bucky's plug. 

He holds it out so Bucky can see and Bucky, whose head turns to look, whose hair is plastered to his forehead, says,

“Oh, god...”

~

Bucky’s legs are strong, he has the serum, he should be beyond fatigue. But his brain should be beyond depression, too, given that the serum ought to regulate his chemicals, and he still has bad days, so he’s not really surprised that he’s shaking.

It’s a choice, of course it is, but it’s such a _good_ decision - sometimes he doesn’t know how he’s still able to make such good decisions for himself. 

His knees are aching - he’s kept them bent for a while now, but it’s so good, it’s just right, it means that his ass is right there, naked and full of the toy that he likes, and pointed straight at Steve, who does not give a fuck. His thighs are actually shaking, he can feel them, and there’s something glorious about this, about the way his tendons ache, the muscles burning. He can hold it indefinitely - knows he can - but this is so much better than any of the other times he’s been made to, so much better when he knows he can stop it.

The ropes won’t hold him, the bed couldn’t stop him, he could snap his restraints like wet paper and stand up and get out but he won’t, oh he won’t, he presses his face into the mattress, clenches tight around the plug. It’s ribbed and short but it’s wide, and it’s not pressing against his prostate but it doesn’t need to. Bucky’s body traps his cock between his stomach and the mattress, and he only has to flex a little to get _just_ enough friction.

Steve shows him the controller, the little cylindrical box with the wire that plugs into the plug Bucky’s wearing, and the button’s already lit, it’s already on and the light is bright, steady, if it’s not on the highest setting, it’s pretty close.

“This old thing - I didn’t realize it belonged to you,” Steve says.

Steve doesn’t care about things like this - Bucky’s pleasure is secondary. It’s not even secondary, it’s separate. Candlelit dinners and cuddles on the couch, shared baths or coffee in cafés, _those_ are things Steve understands, but this, why would Steve know what one half of a sex toy looks li-

~

He plugs the jack into the plug and the loud, high-pitched hum he hears immediately tells him that the whole thing is working. Bucky jerks, makes a noise that sounds like something's startled him, and his legs wobble, his ass bobs, the plug shifts a little, his fingers curl. 

“I'm right, right?” Steve says, unsure as he can make himself sound. “I know the jack goes there, does this definitely go here?”

Bucky doesn’t answer, so Steve leans past him to look at his face.

“Buck?”

Bucky’s face is turned into the mattress, and one eye becomes visible as he turns it back to look at Steve. He doesn’t answer, doesn’t say anything - his spine’s gone rigid and his hips flex slowly against the bed.

“I never know where to put your…things,” Steve says.

Steve shrugs, leans back again and spreads Bucky open with his hands. Then he gets firm grip on the flared base and pulls the plug out, looks at it. It's wet, glistening, so at least there’s enough lube on it, probably.

“I mean if it fits, right?” he says, and pushes it back in just as Bucky makes that first, long moan of a noise again. “That’s the kind of thing you like, though, isn’t it?”

Then he goes back to his book.

~

Bucky rubs his cock against the mattress, hides his face again even though he doesn’t need to, Steve won’t be watching. His hamstrings are so tired, his calves, the rope bites into his ankles but the vibrations are so strong, they’re so good, they’re strong enough that they travel through his body and the bed amplifies them. 

He bites his lip and keeps quiet - Steve’s busy, Steve doesn’t need a distraction from his work, Steve doesn’t want to keep tabs on him twenty-four seven, Steve doesn’t put his noises and his movements and his orgasms down on charts because Steve loves him enough to be in the room while Bucky seeks new heights and pleasures, loves him enough to ignore him when he does.

Steve hasn’t ever cared about this part, hasn’t ever needed Bucky to take care of him or beg for him or crawl on hands and knees for him.

 _“Hey, if you do that stuff, you’re doin’ it for yourself,”_ he says, hands help up, like _no way, not me_ \- only partly an act, but well done. 

Bucky’s never sure, confronted by it, how much he ought to tell Steve. Steve knows who Bucky is, what he wants. Steve knows that sometimes enough isn’t enough, that sometimes too much is just right. 

This, this is so much, a constant buzz of pleasure inside of him that crawls up under his skin, a burning desire to be noticed that Steve ignores as easily as silence - Bucky loves it. He loves knowing that, no matter what he does, no matter how hard he rubs against the mattress, no matter how tired his legs, Steve’s concerns are sheets and furniture, emails and books and movies. Bucky can fuck and fuck, can come and come, and Steve will only want to know why Bucky can’t do it all a little more quietly.

“Oh,” he says, finds it hard to breathe past the pleasure, “mh, mh,” he has to be quiet, has to keep it soft and low.

He doesn’t get punished for loudness, doesn’t get punished for chasing what his body craves, not any more. Steve doesn’t do that to him, Steve doesn’t hurt him for things he can’t control, but what Steve does, what Steve always does, is ask him nicely to be quiet. Bucky loves him so, so much, and Steve’s so busy saving the world and being a good man, and buying Bucky pretty things even though he says he doesn’t understand them.

 _“A plug for your ass?”_ he’ll say. _“Won’t that be uncomfortable? Surely if it vibrates, it’ll just rub, Bucky, you don’t want to get sore, do you?”_

That’s how he knows Steve loves him in return, it’s one of the ways he’s always known. Bucky’s never really sure how much Steve knows, but there can’t be much left unknown to him now. He does such a good job of pretending though, and Bucky never really knows for sure - Steve must know, must have heard and listened and have some understanding even if he can’t ever feel it for himself.

But he does such a good job of feigning obliviousness, even when Bucky can’t hold back the moans.

~

Bucky’s getting close, Steve knows because he knows Bucky’s breaths and the little sounds he makes. He knows them like a second language these days - can tell just what Bucky needs, too.

It’s always been easy to fine-tune - Steve doesn’t want. Not the way Bucky does, not the way Bucky needs. But, he thinks, that makes it easier. There’s nothing to distract him - he can provide. And, after what Bucky’s been through, Steve will provide everything he can.

For now, as it always used to be between them, Bucky doesn’t want attention. Company? Yes, absolutely. Someone present, someone near him. Or, no that’s not right, he wants _Steve_ near him. He wants Steve there but separate, the way Steve’s always been separate.

“You’re gonna make a mess again,” he says, not really a warning, but kind of.

When they were younger, Steve used to tell him what to do. To stand him in the middle of the apartment and tie him with the twine they scrounged from parcels and bunches of vegetables, plaited wool from a sweater Joey Carmichael’s older brother couldn’t fit into no more, given to Bucky - too small for Buck, too big for Steve, and so unraveled, and braided on days when Steve’s lungs wouldn’t let him outdoors but the stiffness in his fingers wasn’t too debilitating.

Bucky bound and trembling while Steve ignored him to draw the curve of his jaw or the jut of his cock or the cleft of his chin and the shape of his mouth - Steve’s always appreciated the cut of Bucky’s body like a Michaelangelo, a Bernini. Strong, detailed, in love because he loves Bucky.

But just as Steve’s always loved Bucky’s strength, just as he’s always loved His Bucky for His Bucky’s sake, there’s never been the pull of lust or the ache of desire. He was Bucky’s keeper, companion, friend, refuge, Bucky’s guard and provider, whenever he could be. Bucky brought them food, bought through labor, and Steve gave him rest, respite from the prying eyes of the world and the expected desires of a society bound just as tightly by tradition as Bucky was by string. 

They’ve been this way, Bucky and Steve, desperate and uninterested respectively, since before they knew the words - since before there _were_ words.

And so he knows, without taking his mind off his work, or his eyes off his screen, why Bucky sounds the way he does. He can tune it out of course, the way Bucky's breathing. He sounds like he's run a marathon, but that's silly, Steve knows he hasn't. How could he? He's been crouch/lying where he is for fifteen minutes. Steve reads about kids being told they can have more marshmallows if they don't eat the one they've got for fifteen minutes, and he wonders how long that would feel to someone who wants something. 

Probably not as bad as all that. 

When he next looks up, the plug is wiggling. He knows his lines, he’s learned his part.

“What's it doing?” he says. “Hang on, I'll get it.”

He presses the button again, so that the high hum becomes a series of like _'shoom-shoom-shoom'_ noises, and that seems to be better. Bucky agrees, obviously, he says,

“Yeah, ohn _yeah_ ,” and his fingers curl and uncurl at the small of his back, he tries to lift his head off the mattress. 

Hmm, Steve's not sure though.

“Should have lube on, right?” he says. “Let me just check.”

He reaches across and, okay, he doesn't pull it all the way out, sue him, he pulls it maybe halfway out and the presses the base down to see inside Bucky. Looks wet enough to him but he puts a little more lube in there just in case – wouldn't want to...interfere with whatever it is Bucky's doing. He settles back into his chair, but Bucky says something then, and Steve plants his finger on the page of the book.

“What'd you say? 'Ham'?” he says.

A muscle in Bucky's ass is jumping.

“I'm,” he says, “I'm-”

Steve waits a few moments, but Bucky doesn't say anything else.

“That's a weird thing to say, Buck, you alright over there?”

“I'm _cuh_ ,” Bucky gasps, and Steve tilts his book down to get a better look at him.

“What, Buck, what was that?”

“I'm _cuh- I'm _comi- ngh! _”___

___“Aw Buck, come on, you know that’s nothin’ to do with me,” Steve says, “can't you hush up a while? I only wanna get to to the end of this chapter.”_ _ _

___“Huuaggh,” Bucky says, and Steve lets him get on with it, he's only got thirty six pages to go._ _ _

___~_ _ _

___Bucky can’t help it, spasms wracking his body - if he were alone, if he were doing this to himself, he could stop, he could rest and wait, but he doesn’t get that luxury. He’s not his own to take care of - like a thing, a possession, like a machine to be set going and stopped when its user pleases, it continues, an onslaught._ _ _

___(He could stop it if he chose, could break his bonds, could ask for mercy, but he won’t. Things don’t speak, possessions can’t ask. Things that are loved enough to be given such gifts don’t need to.)_ _ _

___Steve doesn’t care - Bucky comes and comes, and then his pleasure rises into suffering, so sweet and so sharp._ _ _

___“Steve,” he gasps, “Steve!”_ _ _

___“Mmmhhhh,” Steve answers, not an answer, and he says nothing else besides, doesn’t look (Bucky assumes), doesn’t help, doesn’t stop anything, he just lets Bucky ride it out, lets Bucky keep the gift he’s given by providing him nothing but the things with which to please himself._ _ _

___It’s all he needs. It’s all he wants because it’s all he’s given, all he’s given because it’s all he wants._ _ _

___“Steve,” he groans, past the hitching of his breath and the trembling of his limbs, past the spasms that wrack a body he can barely keep where it’s meant to be, “ _huuuai_ love you”_ _ _

___“Mhm, love you too, Buck,” and his voice is low and distant, he’s still reading his book and god _damn_ Bucky loves him. “Just as well, ain’t it? Pain in my ass as you are.”_ _ _

___This is a man who’ll never put scientific interest over comfort, who’ll never place his own pleasure over Bucky’s - here is a man whose only concern is Bucky, and he shows it by making sure Bucky’s only concern is Bucky, too._ _ _

___Bucky tries to breathe through aftershocks that have turned into something new, but his body’s starting over and it’s only partially the serum._ _ _

___“Ohn, ohhn,” he says, because he can’t help but do it, can’t stop the way the pleasure winds up his spine, a needle-like rush of sensation, he’ll come again, and soon, can’t help it._ _ _

___He ought to be ashamed, he thinks, that he’s not able to stave it off for longer, that he’s not able to make it last. But shame is not for him, shame is not for someone who’s so loved, whose been given something that fits him so perfectly. Shame was taught by people who didn’t understand, by evil that wanted to do them harm. There’s no shame for Bucky, not in front of a man who turns his head away to make sure of it._ _ _

___Bucky’s naked, exposed, he must really be something to behold right now, but he’s the tree that falls in a forest, resolve snapping like branches as he groans like old wood - if a man is naked and pleasured to distraction and no one there will see it, does he make a picture? If no one there is interested, is he really exposed at all?_ _ _

___He shoves his head forward, lifts it the inch that he can and his spine protests, his legs are shaking so hard that he thinks he might fall, and then he’s falling a different way entirely, and can’t hold back the sound._ _ _

_____ _

***

After he finishes the chapter of his book he was reading, Steve makes sure Bucky's alright. He settles one hand on Bucky’s back to hold him still and then kneels down to unpick the knots. Bucky says something about feeling good, and Steve shakes his head.

“Beats me, Buck, come on. You know that's your thing, not mine,” and Bucky shudders against the mattress and gets his legs under him. “I'm gonna answer a couple emails in a minute but I don’t mind if you wanna come sit with me. Quiet, though, yeah?”

“Hmmyeah,” Bucky says, because that’s something true for both of them.

Steve will probably never get past the gnawing anxiety that comes with having Bucky too far away. It isn’t always but it’s often enough - he doesn’t like not knowing where Bucky is, doesn’t like being unable to see him or speak to him. This, keeping him to hand, strapped down and pliant, it’s a relief, a way that lets the knot of worry in his stomach unwind just a little. 

Steve undoes the cuffs, puts them on the nightstand, and it means Bucky can get his hands under him. Bucky slowly stands, cautious of the weight and movement inside him - Steve will never understand what Bucky feels and enjoys, but the warmth in his chest at being able to provide it is more than enough for him. Steve hands the little remote to Bucky, and then he fetches the little machine from the under-bed storage. It’s small and relatively normal-looking, not like the enormous, complicated rigs from the blue movies Bucky likes, that puff and chug and fill the space a couch might take. Steve would rather have a couch - this is perhaps the size of a shoebox, and serves its purpose just as well. 

He takes it out and pulls it across - the small black box with a longish metal stick protruding from it, rings and dials, screw threads and pistons. He takes a look at the settings on it - medium speed is about ninety rpm, and that'll do for when it’s time to use it, he decides, and he puts it down next to his chair, pushes it back and out of the way with his foot.

“Well, go on! You go and pick whatever thing you're pickin',” Steve says, and Bucky does, walks unsteadily to the closet and rummages in one of the boxes, accompanied by the _'shoom-shoom-shoom'_ noise.

Steve considers his next move. Pretending he doesn't care isn't easy. He's not _aroused_ , but that's just who he is. He definitely cares, though – this is Bucky, for goodness sake. He cares more than anything, he’ll do anything to keep Bucky happy. Bucky deserves to be happy.

Bucky comes back, step by unsteady step, his mouth hanging open as his lashes fluter, and Steve frowns for show.

“What’s up with you?” he says.

Bucky holds his transparent fleshlight in one hand. Steve looks at it. Then he looks at Bucky. Bucky is looking at him. His other hand, the one holding the little controller thingy, is shaking.

“The...uh, the plug,” he gasps.

Steve frowns.

“What, it ain't right?” he says. “Turn around, lemme see?”

Bucky does as he's told, makes an about face and then sticks his ass out a little way, gets one hand on each of his ass cheeks and pulls a little. Steve can see the little flared base nestled between his cheeks but he can't get a good look.

“Hey, gimme this,” he says, and takes the controller and the fleshlight out of Bucky's hands. “Can you touch your toes?”

Bucky says,

“Ohn,” but it turns out he can, so Steve doesn't know what the fuss is about. 

Slowly, carefully, Bucky bends down and settles his fingertips on the floor.

“Hmm,” Steve says, and he twists the plug, looking for an off switch. “No...no, it's not...hm, okay-”

Bucky makes a noise that's weirdly high-pitched considering the usual tone of his voice, and Steve can see his asshole clenching, how about that?

~

Steve might not be interested in sexual pleasure, might not care about the way it feels to press a specially designed piece of apparatus very accurately against Bucky’s prostate while it’s buzzing continuously, but Bucky doesn’t need Steve to care about his pleasure. He doesn’t _want_ Steve to care about his pleasure.

Too many men have, too many have been fascinated or morbidly interested - he remembers handlers who left with bulging trousers or, worse, the ones who stayed. Steve’s cock is resolutely soft, his trouser-front resolutely flat. He doesn’t need to adjust himself or ignore his arousal, he doesn’t want to make lewd comments. 

He shifts the plug more inside of Bucky, tilts the base down and it presses back on the inside, tilts the base up and the bulb presses forward and forward and buzzes and Bucky almost falls, has to move his hands to keep from toppling forward, it’s so good, it’s so strong and it unfurls inside him like ink in water.

His cock is wet because Steve once asked him if he wanted condoms and Bucky once told him no. He wanted to make a mess, wanted to be sloppy and pathetic, and Steve lets him, always. There’s no neatness for Bucky, no cleanliness. When Bucky’s had his fun, it’s time to wash sheets and mop floors and polish shoes and put clothes into the laundry. Bucky’s a mess, but he used to be punished for it. Before the war, when they were young, Steve would stare impassively, didn’t care what Bucky did. But then Steve was gone and mistakes were punished with pain, messiness, loss of control, volume, movement. 

But now they’re here, Steve’s back, and the freedom, blessed freedom, to do as he pleases is a counterpoint to the breaking of old shackles, the return to old pleasures. He’s covered in his own come, all over his stomach and his cock, and Steve doesn’t say a word about the mess, Steve only checks that everything’s performing the way it should be.

~

“All this complainin’, what’s the big idea, pal? This looks okay to me?” he says. “Here, I tell you what, I'll turn it off and you can give me it back then, okay?”

“O-” Bucky says, and Steve presses the off button.

At least, that's what he ‘thought’ it was – instead the little _'shoom-shoom-shoom'_ turns to a whistling whine and Bucky's cock leaps between his legs.

“Oops,” Steve chuckles, and Bucky gasps in, and in, and in, “maybe not. You know me and technology. How ‘bout if I press it again?” 

That makes more of a _'shikka-shikka'_ noise, and the noise Bucky makes in response sounds halfway between intensely pained and very annoyed. It’s a good sound - one he’s always made when Steve takes care of him properly.

“Sorry,” Steve says, “here, I'll just take it out, we'll sort it out afterwards.”

He pulls against the base, tugs a little harder when it doesn't want to come, and he feels...

“That's weird, it don’t wanna come. Do you want to keep it? I bet you do, huh?” he taps the base a few times. “That ain’t no surprise, not from you.”

He lifts the base again just to check there's definitely no off button, and Bucky gasps, his cock leaps again, he makes a sound not unlike a sob, but he’s not quite at sobbing, not yet.

“Hey, you keepin’ this clean?” Steve says, grabbing Bucky's cock, pulling it back to look at it. 

He checks it's okay, inspects the slit and the shaft, rubs against the frenulum 'cause it's darker than usual but no, even though Bucky whines, there's no mark there, it's just the color of his skin.

He does it again, ‘just to be sure,’ and Bucky’s stance changes just a little, his knees bend before he manages to straighten them again.

“Seems alright.”

That's fine. Steve makes another attempt on the plug and this time it does come free eventually. Bucky moans at him, but Steve doesn't mind. He unplugs the jack and then holds the button on the controller down for a few seconds.

“Oh, _that's_ it,” he says, holds it out so Bucky can see the little light as it blinks out. “That's fine. No worries, Buck, I got there eventually. Hey, you can get up if you want.”

Bucky takes his time about it as he stands up, but he gets there eventually, turns to face Steve with his cock out at ninety degrees, wet and red.

Steve looks at him. Bucky looks back.

“Well, get your pillow?” Steve says. “Come on, how many times you done this?”

And Bucky sort of…is spurred into action. He goes and grabs one - they’re all on the floor on the other side of the bed, so that the bed is just a big space for Bucky to be on if he wants to - and brings it back. In the meantime, Steve retrieves the tie-down strap from the drawer in the nightstand, and he gives it to Bucky when Bucky comes back with the cushion.

“Can you manage?” he says dryly, and Bucky bites his lip.

Steve rolls his eyes.

“Gimme,” he says over a sigh, holds a hand out or it.

Bucky gives it, stands still like a kid waiting to be told off, and Steve fusses with the pillow, gets the tie down around it so he can fold the thing like a taco and keep it that way.

Thing about their pillows is, Steve hates lying on marshmallows, far too used to sleeping on forest floors. He’d been known to sleep on his hardwood kitchen floor when he first woke up in this century just to try and get a good night’s sleep, but Bucky? 

Bucky’s whole life had been spent in the less-comfortable-bed, the less-comfortable-chair, the rattling seat on public transport and the pew without a cushion in church. He’d slept on forest floors, just like Steve, rattled around in the back of trucks like Steve (at least, eventually Steve had done it too), but he slept on the floor of a cage, he was strapped to metal tables, frozen into tubes and thrown against concrete.

He wants a fuckin’ _cloud_ for pillow then Steve’ll damn well pull it down from the sky with his bare hands. 

As it is, the ones he’s got are huge and fluffy and fold in half and they’re so smushy that, when Steve wraps a tie-down strap around one and ratchets it just-so, there’s just enough room to keep-

“Hand me thing,” he says, and Bucky does,

-a fleshlight in just-so.

“There,” Steve says, lifts his legs and sets it on the floor, puts his legs back down so it’s trapped between his legs and the seat legs. “Have at it.”

And he picks his tablet up to get started on his emails.

Bucky gets down on the floor, on his knees, shuffles forward until he’s just about aligned with the. Orifice. Steve thinks it’s an ass, he can’t remember, but he doubts Bucky’d want anything else. One option he ain’t interested in, on account of being a man’s man, and the other he says he used to get whether he wanted or not.

So ass it is.

“Where's,” Bucky says, and then he looks at Steve, Steve can see him in him periphery. “Uh,” he says.

After a couple of seconds, Steve looks down at him and frowns.

“What, Buck?”

“I,” he says. “Do you have the lube? O-Only it's dry and-”

Steve sighs, picks the lube up and holds it out.

"Sure, Buck," he says, "but could you hold on to it? I gotta get these emails done, and I can't be stopping every couple of minutes for your stuff.”

Bucky takes it, uses it. Steve presumes Bucky knows how much he needs.

“You think of anything else before I get started?"

“Only,” Bucky says, but Steve’s preempted him - it’s his _job_ to preempt him - and is holding out the cuffs.

Bucky takes them.

"Thanks," Bucky says.

Steve goes back to his emails once Bucky seems satisfied, and he can hear the small click of the cap and the little slick sounds of the lube on the latex or silicone or whatever that thing is made of. 

He's got about fifteen emails to answer, but some of them will take longer than others. It doesn't really matter if he doesn't get them all done today, but he'd like to make a start at the very least.

~

Steve goes back to his work, and Bucky stares at the side of his head for a moment. The part of him that’s suffered, that carries the memories of a near-unshakable humiliation, wonders often if this will be the time that things go wrong.

Will this be the day that Steve watches him? Will this be the night that Steve asks him questions and writes down the answers? Will it be this time that Steve will grow angry, impatient, disgusted?

Steve pays him no mind - goes back to his work, and Bucky breathes, shakes his head while Steve ignores him. He loves Steve with everything he’s got, remembers cold nights spent pressed up against skin and bones, remembers lying in a bed, inches from wheezing breaths and a crooked spine and hearing his name said like a gift.

 _“Bucky,”_ gentle and understanding - he knew even then. _“You know I gotta sleep, you just do whatever you need.”_

Affection through indifference - and he knows how it looks to people on the outside.

The transparent fleshlight is for Bucky. Not just for Bucky’s use but _for Bucky_ , because there’s something amazing to him about feeling pleasure he can see for himself. Blindfolds are all well and good, but he hates them. He always hated them, even before he was made to hate them. It’s the same with being gagged - he’ll take a ball gag, a ring gag, even a spider gag, but nothing that covers his face. He was muzzled long enough.

Anyway, he’s allowed to make noise. Machines make noise, possessions do what they’re meant to do. 

So he reaches back and closes his hands into the cuffs at the small of his back, shuffles forward on his knees. He leans his shoulder against Steve’s leg and looks down angles his hips just so. The pillow shifts as he pushes forward and, without a word, Steve moves his far leg to be at the other end of the pillow. It can’t go anywhere now, and Bucky eases his hips forward, pushes in. 

It’s a strange sort of fascination, he’s sure, to feel the tight, cool clutch of something manufactured, so tight it makes his head spin, as he gets to _see it for himself._ The head of his cock is red, and he watches the clear molded silicone replica open up around him. It’s not as tight inside as it could be - that’s deliberate, he needs to decide on that for himself - and the inside is cold enough that it makes Bucky’s ass clench. You can warm the insert, he knows that. He doesn’t want it warm - he’s had things that were warm before and they felt too real but this, this is ridged and has furrows and bumps, it’s the furthest thing from real and his favorite thing to fuck.

He can’t help but watch, watch the way his cock distends the clear sleeve on the inside, the way it moves for him and then moves back. He remembers fucking, remembers what it was like when he enjoyed fucking other people - likes it better now. There’s nothing unexpected about inanimate objects, he can control it - Steve can control him. 

“Steve,” he says, tilts his head back as he shoves his cock in - he tries to be slow, tries to make it last, but he’s failing.

~

Steve isn’t kidding, he really does have email. They’re not urgent, but he might as well deal with them now. This particular one is something about one of the briefings Steve wrote – not that there's anything wrong with it, just that he doesn't necessarily need to elaborate on every single detail. Steve sighs through his nose.

When Bucky says his name, Steve's just in the middle of saying that all the details he includes are important.

“If you read them to the end,” he says as he types, “you'd know that.”

“God,” Bucky says, drops his head into Steve's lap. “Oh, god.”

Steve cards his fingers through Bucky's hair, gets a hand on the back of Bucky's head and pulls him closer.

“Come on, Bucky, get comfortable.”

Bucky sort of mashes his face against Steve's leg and Steve can hear the noise Bucky’s dick is making in the fleshlight.

“Might I recommend,” Steve says as he types, while Bucky rubs Steve's thigh with his forehead, “that you take more time to review the reports...”

Bucky's head turns against Steve's leg once or twice – probably scratching an itch he can't reach now his hands are tied.

“Steve,” he says.

“...before you you make any more suggestions to me. Yeah, Buck?”

“Steve,” he says again, more of a breath this time than a word, and Steve lifts his tablet out of the way of Bucky's head, pretending that’s the problem.

“Sorry, “ he says, and settles so that he can use his tablet without interfering in wherever Bucky would like his head to go. “Aaand, send.”

“Steve, please can you,” Bucky says, and Steve frowns, finishes the next sentence he's reading, and looks down at him.

“Huh?” he says.

“Steve, can you…I want it tighter, Steve, can you make it-”

Steve might be annoyed ordinarily but it's not that Bucky's tied his hands together and can’t reach now, not really. It’s that Bucky wants pleasure accessible but administered. Steve doesn’t punish, Steve only pleasures, but Bucky doesn’t want attention, doesn’t want participation, he wants instruction and supervision and it’s a strange compromise they’ve reached together, was a strange coincidence before any of the awful things they’ve been through even happened at all.

“All the way tight, huh?” he says. “Go on then, stick in there, else how’re you s’posed to tell?”

Bucky does, bites his lower lip and flexes his hips forward, brow furrowed, sheen of sweat on his skin. Steve lifts his leg and reaches down, turns the end of the fleshlight to make it more airtight and Bucky hisses through his teeth before his mouth falls open on a moan.

“What’s goin’ on with this?” Steve asks, rubs at one nipple as though it were a dirty mark, pinches at it as though it were lint on a sweater. 

He licks his thumb and rubs at it again, scratches once with his fingernail as though it might come off.

“Huh,” he says, and Bucky fucks the fleshlight in earnest as Steve goes back to his emails.

~

Bucky presses his chest against Steve’s leg because he can’t hold on with his hands. Pleasure, bright and strong, forces its way through him, makes his lungs shake and his breaths quaver, and it’s not the most he’s ever had, it’s not a feeling that will have him screaming, but it’s still only a matter of time until he comes, and not much time, either. 

Thank god for the fleshlight, somewhere he can pump into without worrying whether they’ve been drugged or blackmailed or lied to or coerced. The fleshlight isn’t getting a hazing, Bucky’s not getting punished. Even if he can’t hold back, he’s not going to get it on Steve’s socks, not going to have to lick his own mess off Steve’s polished boots.

And even if he did, even if he came all over Steve, to Steve, it’s a natural progression. Steve would wait until he’s done and change - machines spring leaks all the time, sexual arousal to orgasm is a journey that always ends the same. Steve wouldn’t be surprised that he’s come. When he comes, Steve won’t be disgusted, and won’t be impressed, and won’t be confused or disappointed or elated. Orgasm happens, and Steve will be there when it does, indifferent as always.

Bucky closes his eyes and pushes his face against Steve’s leg, breathes in the scent of the laundry detergent, the fabric softener, the smell of paper and ink and glue, the smell of the leather cover of Steve’s tablet, of the worn fabric of the chair he sits in, of clean sweat and cologne.

The first one’s almost easy, inevitable, and he opens his mouth and breathes, feels his face crease up and just breathes, just breathes. Bucky can’t turn his head to look but he already knows.

He used to mouth the name he didn’t want to speak, used to form the words _Steve, Steve_ without sound so as not to distract him, so as not to pull him out of the headspace he’d settled into. Now he doesn’t need it - the name’s already in his mind and in his heart, he doesn’t need it in his mouth.

~

Three emails after the first, Bucky sounds like he's having an asthma attack, but Steve knows he's not.

“Shh, sweetheart, I'm just in the middle of something.”

Bucky presses his face into Steve's leg and makes a long, drawn out kind of noise, and then he kind of shudders and twitches a little. 

Bucky asks for his attention but doesn’t want it - it’s always been that way. Steve sometimes thinks Bucky might lose all hope if he actually gave it to him.

When he first got Bucky back or, more accurately, when Bucky first wanted this after Steve had gotten him back, Steve had asked him, had tried to convey things he didn’t truly comprehend. After all, it’s difficult to know what you’ve never experienced, difficult to anticipate needs you’ve never had for yourself.

But he’d asked, after Bucky had told him the terrible things he’d been made to do. He’d tried to find out if Bucky wanted the kind of attention Steve wasn’t sure he could give, the sort of response Steve didn’t know if he could emulate. 

He’d thought perhaps, after decades of impersonal testing and forcing, after so long being treated as an object, that Bucky might want affection (which Steve could give) and closeness (which Steve could give) and lovemaking (which Steve could no more imagine how to go about enjoying than he could a new color).

But what Bucky craved more than anything was the same thing he’s always craved - to know that he’s loved, to be given the means to feel all he can feel, and to never be punished for the way he is.

 _“It’s because you love me,”_ he’d said. _“I want you to do it, because you love me. They did it out of indifference, because they couldn’t stand me, or because they wanted something from me. But you’re none of those things, you don’t want that for me.”_

And it’s true - Steve could never be indifferent to Bucky’s happiness, could never hate Bucky, could never want something in return for this.

Bucky's breath warms his hip though his pants, and sound of him fucking the sex toy is quiet enough that it doesn't stop Steve doing his emails but, the second time Bucky sounds like he's having a panic attack, Steve moves the tablet away from him again to make sure he doesn't knock it.

Bucky says,

“Ahh, ahh!” like Steve might have hurt him, but then he sort of...flops his head over and pushes his open mouth against Steve's leg.

“Ow, honey, watch your teeth,” he says, and scrolls down his sent messages with one hand, pinching a bit of the fabric of his trousers with the other, which he then holds up until Bucky clamps it between his teeth.

~

He tries not to rub himself against Steve’s leg, tries not to distract him from what he’s doing. He wants to, cock straining inside the toy, leaking steadily, and Bucky’s brain is beginning to forget how to think, his world is beginning to zero in on a couple of important things: Orgasm, and the side of Steve’s face.

Bucky’s saliva soaks into the fabric of Steve’s pants, the material feels wrong between his teeth, soft in a way that isn’t comforting, textured in a way that sets his teeth on edge, but it’s what he’s been given, and Steve doesn’t even _look_ at him. Its a gift, and Steve doesn’t even check that he’s keeping it.

(Doesn’t need to, his mind supplies, the fabric is still attached) but isn’t that just Steve all over? Giving him something to keep him happy, something _else, yet more_ to keep him happy, even though he’s given so much already. And, what’s more, it’s something to connect Bucky to him - a connection Bucky doesn’t have to keep, but a way to anchor himself to Steve.

Steve has always done it - a trailing piece of wool, an nonchalant toe against Bucky’s calf, one hand in his hair, the wiping-away of sweat with a damp cloth. He’s always present, but never interferes.

Bucky moans, can’t help it, his eyes flutter closed against the onslaught made by his own motions, he’s going to be so tired when he’s done that Steve could do anything he wanted to him. It’s made so much better knowing Steve won’t.

 _“I’m like those nature documentary guys,”_ he said once, _“interfering is for participants.”_

Bucky doesn’t need it, he’s already there, nails biting into his palms as his body locks up, his cock swelling, deep contractions of his muscles that he doesn’t control.

"Nnnh, nnnnh, nnnnnhhhhh," he says, and Steve can't spare him any attention so he just reaches out blindly and pets when he feels hair.

"Shh, shh, sweetheart, I gotta find this email.”

~

Bucky says something back, Steve's not sure what it is, maybe 'can I' or 'gonna,' but Steve frowns at his tablet screen.

“Hmm, honey, what was that?” he says, and Bucky makes an odd growling kind of cry through his teeth and kind of slumps, head falling between Steve's thigh and the side of the chair where he then garbles a bunch of noise to himself, hips snapping forward once, twice. “Buck, you gotta speak up,” but Bucky doesn't, just sort of pushes his head against Steve over and over, his whole body's shaking. “Okay, fine.”

Part of Steve feels guilty that it’s almost easy, even after everything. But then, he’s grateful he can still give Bucky this, that they still work so well as one person - because that’s what they are. There’s no split, they’re two halves who just speak at different times. Bucky wants and Steve gives; Bucky desires and Steve provides. Even when Steve needed and Bucky was the one to put food on the table, to pay doctors’ bills, bring soup and blankets and everything else, when Steve couldn’t work to support them, even then, Steve could provide like this. 

And it’s not something he dislikes, Bucky asked him as much, after. Once he’d come back to Steve, once they’d managed to piece themselves together. Did Steve mind that he made a mess? Did Steve mind that he wanted this? Did Steve mind, could Steve handle it, was Steve disgusted?

How could Steve ever punish, belittle, how could he, when it was something Bucky needed so much, something he enjoyed so much, something Steve could give him and something he treasured so carefully?

Just because Steve doesn’t understand it or, at least, can’t feel it for himself, doesn’t mean it isn’t valid. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t love providing. Besides, he’s got the backpay to do it now where Bucky was barely pardoned. Steve’s got the money to spend, who better to spend it on?

~

Bucky mashes his face against Steve’s leg, fucks harder, snapping his hips forward as fast as they’ll go. It’s so good and the toy is tight and wet and he presses his forehead against Steve’s leg, looks down at where he can see his cock and the fluid amassing around it on the inside. 

It’s a mess, there are bubbles, Bucky’s skin is getting redder and he tips his head back, digs his chin into Steve’s thigh.

“Steve,” he says, “ah, Steve.”

Steve doesn’t listen. Bucky smiles, can’t help it.

He can’t overbalance backwards, they’re too close to the wall, he doesn’t need to worry about falling, failing, he only needs to focus on what his body wants, and his knees are aching, his lungs are burning, the stretch of muscle across his chest is pulled so tight he’d think it might snap and he’s pretty sure he’s starting to get rug burn on his chin from Steve’s pants as well as from the carpet, but he can’t stop, his ears are buzzing, his mouth is dry-

“Uhn, Steve,” he says, because he’s close and desperately “Steve-”

“Can it wait?” Steve says, and Bucky shuts his eyes because they start to sting, Steve, his Steve, is perfect.

“Steve,” he says, and his voice is thick, his throat hurts, he loves Steve so _much._

“I really gotta do this Buck,” he says, and Bucky can’t stop himself, is caught halfway between a moan and a sob and comes again, hips stuttering forward as his fists clench, his whole body pushing forward - he can’t get any deeper but his body tries anyway.

“Ohh, fuck, _fuck_ ” he manages, but it’s hard to choke out when his head is back so far, throat working hard over the air he can barely take. 

His hips snap forward of their own accord and it’s like someone’s taken sandpaper to his nerves, like someone’s pressing needles into his skin, it’s too much, it’s too much but there isn’t a damn thing he can do about it.

“Alright,” Steve says. “What was it you wanted?”

~

Bucky’s face is red and his lashes are damp and his mouth is open and there’s sweat gathering in the hollows behind his collarbones and he looks so worn out and Steve _loves_ him.

He pushes Bucky’s hair back off his forehead, safe in the knowledge that this is what Bucky wants, that the reason Bucky looks halfway to miserable is because he’s so overwhelmed. 

“You don’t look to good,” Steve says. “You oughta lie down on the bed. Get up.”

Bucky leans into the touch and then there’s a small click of metal on metal as he thumbs the release on the cuffs, and his hands shake when he holds Steve’s leg for balance, pulling out of the fleshlight. It makes an obscene noise, because obviously it would do by now, and Bucky’s stiff, aching visibly, when he tries to shuffle back.

“Don’t want to ruin your knees, otherwise you’d have to do this like a normal person. And I know how much you’d hate that.”

Steve doesn’t say _normal_ like other people used to say it. He knows other people said _normal_ and meant _not a freak like you_ but that’s not what Steve means. Steve means _normal_ like _not special,_ and Bucky starts trying to unbend his legs. His cock drags over the carpet, of course it does, leaves a smear, and Steve looks at it with his best displeased expression.

“All this and I’m gonna have to clean the carpet, too?” he says. “You can crawl to the closet if you’re too worked up to stand.”

Steve knows he’ll crawl there whether he can stand or not, and goes back to his emails because the only thing he’ll see from here is Bucky’s ass, and he doesn’t look at Bucky’s ass. Then he says to the tablet screen,

“Pick something reasonable, I’m not doing this _for_ you.”

It’s a signal, code, secret language for what he means. Steve _isn’t_ going to do it for him, but it means Bucky gets to see to himself, to set his own pace.

Still, Steve knows the pace he’ll set - Bucky’s doing this to wear himself out, to get so oversensitized he wants to crawl out of his skin, to pleasure himself until he can’t take any more of it. Maybe it’s a trust thing - it’s certainly a necessity. But if Steve can give him this, if Steve can give him the means to make himself happy, he’ll spend every day doing it for the rest of his life.

~

Bucky finds a vibrator that’s going to push him. He’s got ones that look like tubes and ones that look like modern art but this one’s just slightly curved in the right place, slightly bulbous at the end, with a base he can wrap his fingers around. There’s no speed pattern setting, no fast, medium, slow - it’s on and then it’s on and he can fuck himself with it as much as he pleases. 

When he comes back from the closet, on his feet this time, with the vibrator in hand, Steve is dropping the fleshlight aside as though it has personally wronged him, the tie-down strap already on the floor, and Bucky’s tendons feel weak, his bones feel like sponges. Steve throws the pillow at him, underhand, and it thumps into Bucky’s chest hard enough to make him stumble. 

_“Don’t_ wear out your knees,” he says, and Bucky nods, swipes his hand over his face to get the sweat and whatever else. 

He puts the pillow down on the bed, has to come back for the lube, and Steve double-takes as he picks it up, and then sighs, as though he’s pissed Bucky didn’t remember to pick it up when he left. 

Bucky takes the bottle and the vibrator to the bed, and he lies perpendicular to the headboard again, the pillow under his hips. The pillowcase will need a wash when he’s done, but he doesn’t care, he’ll do it. One of them always does it. This time he’s facing Steve, too. He puts himself close, so that Steve could reach out and settle one hand on his head, and he hangs his arms off the bed to get lube on the vibrator. When he’s done that, he drops the lube onto the floor and turns the vibrator on - Steve doesn’t even look up at the noise, doesn’t even turn his head. 

Bucky reaches back with the vibrator and shuts his eyes and lets his legs fall apart - his knees hurt too much to get his legs under them, and his chest aches, his knuckles protest because he’s had his fists clenched so long except, except, the metal ones don’t tire. So he uses that hand, holds the toy so tightly it doesn’t even buzz against the metal, and tries to press it against his hole. 

The barest touch has him flinching, hissing through his teeth as his head goes back. He tries again and it hurts his cock, makes every nerve jump from his hole to his fucking foreskin and he bites his lower lip hard, tries again.

“Ah! Ah,” he says, doesn’t even mean to do it, can barely get the breath _in_ to do it.

He tries again, squeezes his eyes shut and pushes against his own body’s resistance, and then the bulbs slips in and-

 _“Ah, ahhh!_ he can’t even stop it this time, can’t bite it back, toes curling, fingers of his flesh hand curling in the fitted sheet and he knows the next thing he ought to do but it’s like his limbs are frozen, like he can’t make himself do it. 

He just keeps on making noise - quiet but still loud in the near-silent room, and he counts in his head, he’ll do it on three, he’s been told to do it, he _asked_ to be told to do it, and he knows it’s going to be more than he’ll be able to maintain, more than he’ll manage for much longer than a few minutes, if that. 

One, he bites his lip and tries to relax his body, tries to ignore the instinct to clench down, two, he breathes through pursed lips, tightens his grip on the base and turns his wrist just enough that he knows he’ll hit the right place, it’s instinctive by now, three, and he thrusts as hard and as fast as he can at this angle, he’s on the third one by the time his body catches up, and then he’s writhing on the sheets, limbs jerking without his consent, he’s near shouting, each breath punched out, his skin is shaking, his muscles shiver and seize and he can’t help it, he kicks out and jams his hips down into the pillow and then it’s _more_ and-

He’s coming again, forces his hand to keep moving, cries out over the strength of it, can hear distantly the yawing, high-low whine of the vibrator as he thrusts it in and out of himself and Steve just sits there, frowning at his tablet, until he plants his elbow on the nighstand and rests his head on his raised fist.

Bucky can’t keep going, he _can’t_ \- the servos don’t tire but the rest of him does, his shoulder aches, the scapula where the shoulder’s anchored, his chest where he’s bent himself back to get what he wants - his body does it without him, seeks and pushes and pulls for it, and he’s just along for the ride but, when he slides it out of himself, jerking as it passes the ring of muscle, he can’t keep it in his hand, can’t keep his fingers around it, and he drops it. It hums quietly on the mattress. He can feel the vibration in his legs.

“I’m tryin’ to work here,” Steve says, and Bucky can’t even lift his head to look at him.

He knows he’s really out of it when the buzzing on the mattress stops, and then there’s sound from the closet, and then something else lands next to him, something heavy. He opens his eyes, turns his head and there’s-

“Can you at least try and keep it down?” Steve says, standing right there, and then there’s something pressing against Bucky’s mouth - he opens up for it not instinctively but because he wants to, and then Steve’s tying the - Bucky doesn’t know what it is but it feels like cotton, like a bandana or a scarf, maybe one of the torn off sleeves from one of his shirts - then Steve’s tying it at the back of Bucky’s head. 

Bucky tries to get his hand under himself, succeeds in pushing himself onto his back and, oh, oh, please, Steve’ holding Bucky’s favorite, Bucky’s _absolute_ favorite dildo and it’s dumb, it’s so dumb that it’s his favorite but he can’t help it - it the meeting of his two best fantasies, the apex of his two favorite things - Steve’s holding a replica of his own dick, because they made one, because they bought a kit, and Bucky gets to have it, Bucky gets to get never get fucked by _anyone_ ever again, _and_ he gets to only have _Steve’s_ dick in him - forever, if he wants. 

Steve doesn’t want sex, Steve doesn’t get the urge to fuck, but before they understood, before they figured it out, they tried fooling. Bucky tried everything back then, hands and mouths, tried putting on a show, and once or twice he got Steve up by touching him a certain way, though it never lasted long. Steve hold a replica of his own dick and, once or twice, Bucky held something just that length and girth in his hand, hot and thick. He’s the only one who ever has, so he understands, aside from Steve himself.

“Yeah,” he tries to say, but it’s only a noise past the fabric in his mouth, and Steve points.

“Gonna put your feet in the cuffs?” he says and, right now, the cuffs are on a bar that’s maybe six inches apart, but it’s telescopic, that’s the thing. 

It takes Bucky’s aching knuckles and shaking hands a couple of minutes to the get the straps undone, to sit up and get the cuffs closed around his ankles, and then Steve’s attaching a long length of chain, one end to each of the cuffs, with a hook in the middle, because there’s a ring embedded in the back of the headboard. As soon as the straps are tight, Steve extends the bar, so now it’s wider than Bucky’s shoulders, now even if he tries to press his knees together there’s still plenty of air between them. 

Steve will always take care of him, will always make sure Bucky can take care of himself

Because that’s the crux of it - when Bucky can’t do it for himself, Steve’ll make sure he can’t _not_ -do it, Steve’ll make sure he’s set up to succeed even when all he can do by himself is fail, Steve will make sure he can only make himself happy. There won’t be room for getting it wrong, there won’t be any way he can fail.

“Up the bed,” Steve says. “Come on, Buck, how many times we gotta do this?” 

Bucky pulls himself up the bed with his hands, ankles either end of the bar, gag in his mouth, and he’s barely there when Steve says,

“You gonna lie down?” 

Bucky is, he is, and he checks to make sure he won’t hit his head on the headboard - he doesn’t need to check, Steve wouldn’t ask if Bucky couldn’t do it safely, but he checks anyway because he can, because he wants to. 

Steve hands him the strap of polyester webbing with the velcro - a question - Bucky takes it. 

Bucky can still maneuver - he was trained to do it and he learned to do it and so, naked as the day he was born, he rolls his whole body back, up, brings his ankles up over his head and folds himself in two. And then Steve’s over him, picking the chain up before it’s got a chance to swing down and hit him, taking it way up instead, back towards the headboard and he hooks it there, chain connected to bar connected to Bucky.

“I gotta do everything around here, huh?” he says.

Bucky lets the chain take his legs’ weight, with his feet over his head, lets hanging there take the strain off his spine, and then he wraps one end of the polyester strap around his wrist and closes the velcro - he pulls at it. The strap is the same as the stuff they use for seatbelts, it’ll withstand him pulling on it for a while at least. He threads the other end of the strap over the bar between his legs, which is now directly above his face. Then he wraps the other end of the strap around his metal wrist. 

And then there he is, wrists strapped to the same bar as his ankles, ankles two feet apart, looking up at his own ceiling between his own hands between his own feet. He looks up at Steve, helpless - helpless because Steve helped him make himself helpless.

He’s got no place to hide, nothing’s hidden anyway, and he can feel how exposed he is, cool air on the underside of his balls where they’ve slipped down towards his stomach, cock wet and leaking on his abs, air on his hole and-

“Aah, aah,” the lube is cold because that’s how it is, Steve doesn’t even have to squeeze the bottle. 

If Bucky lifts his head, looks down the length of his own body, bent in two, looks at where Steve is down by Bucky’s hip instead of where his own feet are either side of his head, he can see Steve just standing there with the bottle held upside down over Bucky’s hole. He clenches, because the air is cold and the lube is colder, because he’s empty and he wants to desperately not to be, and he can _hear_ the sound it makes.

When Steve’s done, he caps the lube and drops it on the bed. It lands right next to Bucky but it might as well be miles away, and then one huge, warm hand is on his ass, moves down the back of Bucky’s thigh - which is _towards_ his face - and Steve says,

“Looks like enough.”

He leans down, picks up the black shoebox-sized portable fucking machine he bought for Bucky, and sets it on the bed.

~

Bucky’s gone quiet, though he looks like he’s fallen off a ship in a storm, soaking wet and shivering, and he’s watching Steve with sharp eyes, breaths he keeps holding between labored gasps.

The little fucking machine is just a motor and a stick on a cam, which is pretty smart, and it wasn't cheap, but Bucky likes it, Bucky loves it. It’ll do for him what Steve can’t do, and Steve holds Bucky’s favorite replica, holds his own dick, in his hand and looks at it. 

“This?” he says, and Bucky nods, halfway frantic, his chest heaves, his stomach concaves. 

His ass clenches, too, which Steve has a pretty good view of given that Bucky’s folded in half, and Steve mounts the replica of his dick on the shaft of the machine. Once it gets going, it’ll really get going, but Steve can set it so it starts slow, can turn it on carefully and make sure the cam makes one full rotation, all the way out and all the way back.

Then, when it’s at its shortest, he pushes the whole thing forward and brings the tip of the silicone replica right up against Bucky’s ass, rubs it over Bucky’s hole for a second or two so he knows what’s coming. Bucky moans brokenly, his ass clenches again, and his fingers flex, his toes curl and uncurl. He makes a soft, “uh, uh,” noise that sounds at once both impatient and involuntary, and then Steve pushes it - the machine and the dick that’s attached to it - forward.

Bucky stretches his neck out, holds his breath, wriggles his hands and his ankles in their cuffs, but the chain holds, he’s not going anywhere.

Steve gets the replica cock it in him just past the head, maybe a little further, so that even when the machine pulls it back all the way, there’s still no chance it’ll slip out of him. Then he opens the drawer of the nightstand and pulls out a few things he knows will make the difference to Bucky.

~

Bucky’s gaze zeroes in on the nipple clamps first, can’t help it. They’re on a chain, too and, even though moving makes not a blind bit of difference, he still tries to present his chest to Steve, still tries to arch his back to make it easier as he nods.

“Eah,” he says, “eah,” but Steve’s already doing it. 

It’s not pain when the clamps close on sensitive flesh, it’s just a burn, just a line of fire from his chest to his cock. It stings when Steve hooks the chain to the same place as the bar, but the chain’s long enough that it barely matters at all - it’s just another way to make sure Bucky has what he needs, to make sure Bucky can stay in the right place to get what he deserves. 

He’s so busy breathing through that, so hazy with the want of it, that he only knows Steve’s doing something else when he feels it, something small and constricting around the head of his cock, something thin and biting around his balls, something cold against his perineum. 

Steve lifts his hand and, in it, is another small controller, like the one he handed Bucky before. It’s on a wire and, when he drapes it over the bar, the constriction around Bucky’s balls grows tight, the controller hangs inches from his face and, abruptly, Bucky knows what he’s done.

~

The wire for the little vibrating egg works reasonably well as a way to anchor it, the controller over the spreader bar, the egg resting against Bucky’s perineum, the wire around his balls. It’ll move around, of course it will, but the only other option is another vibrator up inside him, and there’s no room for that now, he doesn’t need it. 

“Think you used enough sex toys there, Buck?” he says, and Bucky laughs, can’t help it, fragile and breathless because it’s all he can manage. “Listen, I do this, you let me work, understand?”

“Huhh,” he says, “eeah,” and Steve turns around to hide his smile. “Thpeve,” he says around the bandana, feeling safe enough to address him - sometimes he doesn’t, sometimes he doesn’t feel safe enough to make eye contact, sometimes he doesn’t feel safe enough to even be in the same room - Bucky’s psyche is a nervous, skittish thing, just like he is. 

But _today_ , he’s naked because he wants to be, close to Steve because he wants to be, he’s tied his own limbs together and asked to be wrecked by things Steve has bought him and set up for him (and made for him, in that one notable instance). Today’s a good day, which Steve will reinforce with everything he can.

Steve makes sure the ring that sits under the head of Bucky’s cock rests with the little vibrator right over his frenulum, because Bucky’d be about ready to launch himself into space if he weren’t tied down, and that’s exactly how he likes it.

On the one or two occasions he tried anything sexual with Bucky, years and years ago, Bucky’s preferences made themselves known fairly quickly. Bucky still calls him a service top, even if Steve doesn’t do any topping. Well, part of him does, obviously, and that part is strapped to what Steve has, on occasion, called the Bucky-Fucker just to watch Bucky double-take. But the service part? Steve doesn’t do sex, doesn’t even _want_ it, but pleasing Bucky? Making it so Bucky can have what he wants, re-inhabit a body his mind was forced out of for too long, reclaim an autonomy taken from him, find pleasure in himself the way he used to, it’s everything. And even if it’s never the same, even if neither of them will ever be the men who left New York in 1943, Steve will give Bucky anything, do anything for him, he’ll shut the world out and set it on fire if he has to.

But all Bucky wants, all Bucky ever wants is this - to feel good while Steve lets him. Not to be scrutinized, punished, denied, monitored, handled, corrected-

Just to be, and be allowed to be.

~

Steve frowns, gives him a once over and then seems to deflate a little.

“Right,” he says. “So we’re back to this again, huh?” 

There are a few seconds of silence where Buck doesn’t say anything, where Steve just looks at him.

“Well?” Steve says, and this is what Bucky means - this is another of the many reasons he loves Steve and knows Steve loves him too.

“Mph,” Bucky says, and he can feel tears at the corners of his eyes, can feel the heat in the skin on his face, feels a remembered shadow threaten. _“Fleathe,”_ he says around the gag, can’t bring himself to say more than that, enveloped suddenly by the overwhelming situation that he’s put himself in.

He used to be made to beg.

But then Steve is pushing the shadow back just by being there, just by saying the right thing, just by knowing Bucky as well as he does.

“Turn it on, huh?” he says, but the feigned disappointment, the pretend irritation, is gone. His face is open and neutral - there’s no shame here, not between them. “Of course.” He smiles a little, warm, affectionate, brushes the hair off Bucky’s forehead with his fingers. “Truss yourself up so you can’t reach, huh? That’s my Bucky.”

And then-

“Haagh, _aah,”_ fuck, it’s so _big_ , it’s so good, fuck, he can’t get away - that’s the whole point - and it’s so-

It’s so-

“Wait,” Steve says, “that’s not right.”

~

He flicks it up onto medium, and then the room is filled with the rhythmic whir-thud of a machine designed specifically to give Bucky what he needs at ninety resolutions per minute, and the long, drawn-out moans of Steve’s best guy, who’s too fucked out to make it stop, and comfortable enough to let it happen.

He once considered leaving Bucky alone, relying on Jarvis to monitor him while he stood just out of sight on the other side of the doorframe. He’d thought maybe being ignored completely would be something Bucky wanted. But that, Bucky said, wouldn’t be what he wanted at all. He wanted Steve there, to be there and ignore him, not monitoring by hidden cameras. He’d had enough of that.

Bucky hisses through his teeth, makes a noise that might be “oh, oh” at any other time, but now it sounds like the word has been smeared like fresh charcoals by careless fingers, even though this has been orchestrated right down to length of time. All Steve has to do now is ignore him until the notification pops up on his tablet (he wears an analogue watch too, just in case), and let Bucky do what he wants, and take what he wants to take.

Steve goes around the bed and starts picking up the rope, the other discarded toys and aids they’ve been using. He makes sure they’re neat, and keeps Bucky’s sounds in the back of his mind. He’ll know if there’s a problem, otherwise he’s busy.

~

He can’t breathe, it feels like the dildo’s fucking the air out of him, feels like the pleasure’s trying to eat him up from the inside. Sometimes, when he jerks off, if he’s alone, he’ll make noises. He’ll say ‘oh yeah,’ or watch his own hand on his cock because he’s allowed. No, it’s better than that, he’s not ‘allowed’ - he just _can_ , whenever he wants, can just go jerk off or go find something to fuck himself with or he can walk around naked or drink a hot chocolate, he can do whatever he wants.

But the point is that sometimes he makes the noises. Sometimes he opens his mouth and makes the noises because they sound sexy and he doesn’t have to be quiet.

But this, the replica of Steve’s dick thrusting into him and into him, he doesn’t make noises, it’s not that he’s making sounds, it that he _can’t stop himself_ making sounds. He couldn’t be quiet right now if his life depended on it (it doesn’t!) and the noises start to come with each thrust of the thing, it’s big and slick and it feels like Bucky’s body is remolding itself around it, feels like he shouldn’t be able to take it but can only let it in. It feels like it’s pushing his legs aside and making his hips wider and pushing his stomach up and he knows it’s not, it’s normal sized, it’s the size of Steve’s perfectly normal dick, but it feels so _good_.

Every breath in is a gasp, every breath out is a moan, and Steve says,

“That’s funny, look how little your balls have gone,”

And it’s true, they’re small and tight and drawn up because every thrust is like sparks on the inside, like he’s got four times as many nerves as he did when he started. When it passes over his prostate each time, his stomach quivers, his lungs shake on the inside, and the force of every thrust moves his cock and his balls, they fuckin’ bounce, and he sort of half laughs but then it’s not a laugh any more and he’s just trying to get the air into his lungs to breathe.

Every time he gets enough, he loses it, the noises forced out taking his breath with it. He flexes his wrists in the strap, tries to pull his ankles from the cuffs, but it just makes the silicone replica feel bigger. He does it again to feel it again.

“Uugh, _huaagh,_ ” he doesn’t really manage much more than that - how can he?

Steve is still near him when he can feel the first orgasm coming, and he pulls at his bonds instinctively - a _clank-clank_ of metal as he gasps in, and in, pushes his ass back as much as he can, can’t spread his legs any further but he tries and then-

Then it’s-

The ‘ah god’ comes out “ah gah” and then-

~

Bucky makes a noise that grates up from the back of his throat and, when Steve looks at him, he’s got his face screwed up, teeth bared, and he’s sort of…wiggling. Except he’s not going anywhere, obviously, and his hair is stuck to his forehead and his muscles strain but Steve’s pretty sure he’s trying to pull himself towards the machine. 

He lets Bucky have this one, strong though it obviously is - Bucky’s arms shake, he tosses his head, he comes all over his crunched-up abs and then he shoves his hips down as well as he can, cock bouncing again with the movement. He thumps his head into the mattress, too, and rattles the bar and chain again. 

The machine doesn’t stop, that’s the thing, and Steve’s seen Bucky push himself to his limits before - Bucky’s not coming down. He can’t, there’s no respite, which means he’s going to get louder, and more squirmy, and more out of breath - he’s having a great time. If he weren’t, he’d say so, he’d indicate it, they’ve got signals. As things stand, Bucky’s past saying ‘oh’ and ‘ah’ now and he’s moved onto noises that sound like he’s been kicked very hard in the shins. 

It’s weird comparison to make, but Steve’s heard both, and it’s accurate. 

_“Aagh!”_ he says, over and over, stomach concaving as he tries to inflate his chest. _“Aagh! Aagh, haagh-”_

Steve gets up, stands right by the bed and looks down at him, pushes the hair off Bucky’s forehead because there’s no doubt it itches.

Bucky makes a series of small “uh,” noises as he tries to focus on Steve, so Steve shakes his head.

“Forgot all about these, huh?” he says, because he didn’t forget at all, but this is the turning point.

He reaches out, presses the teeny button on the side of the cock-ring, dials the wheel on the wire-remote up to full, and Bucky goes rigid.

“There,” Steve says. “That ought to keep you busy.”

~

Bucky feels like he’s going to tear himself apart, feels like he needs to, feels like it’s going to happen anyway.

There isn’t the passage of time, there’s no _more_ of any particular feeling, it’s just that suddenly he’s shouting at the ceiling and his blood feels full of needles, suddenly the bar is bowing under the pressure of his hands pulling against it, suddenly he feels like he’s been hollowed out and stuffed full of burning wires, curling and twisting up inside him,

“Steve,” he tries to ask, tries to shout, “Steve, God,” but its’ all a wide mess of sound, pulled and stretched like taffy, and he knows a few seconds before it happens that he’s losing the last of his control.

He tries to hold onto it, to grasp the last few threads of coherence as they slip away, but then the sensation builds, and it feels like it’s dragging the veins from his muscles, feels like its unmooring all his nerves and drawing them into the center of of his body, and he hears himself keening, hears the rattle of the chain and the bedframe as he pulls and twists and he hears it all, knows its’ him who’s making all the noise and can’t do a damn thing about it.

It’s too much, it’s _terrifying_ , it doesn’t feel like his skin should be able to stay like this, feels like he should be burning up into embers, feels like his body should be fracturing off his bones, it’s relentless, endless, the pounding inside of him, the pulsing of his cock, his balls ache, the backs of his knees and his inside elbow and his neck are sweating, he feels like his body’s going to turn itself inside out and-

“Steve!” he shouts, it’s a shout, he doesn’t control it, and this time there’s a ringing silence for half a second, a moment of pure emptiness as the universe implodes inwards on itself, and then he’s crying out, again, a third time, a fourth, it won’t stop, he can’t make it stop, and he laughs, “Ahhh, ahhhh,” and he’s crying, and he lifts his head, pushes and pulls against his restraints to no avail, and then thrusts his hips back- 

spreads his knees-

stretches and-

just 

lets

go

***

His ears ring, so he doesn’t hear the words to start with. There might not be any. He doesn’t know when all the devices stopped but, as the ringing dies down, he finds the room silent aside from the sounds of Steve’s hands on the various pieces of apparatus.

Steve’s face shows no concern, and he’s careful. He removes the clamps and rubs the blood back into Bucky’s nipples with the pad of his thumb. It stings, but Bucky can’t bring himself to do much more than wince. 

Steve unties the gag next, slides his hands around the back of Bucky’s skull as though he’s precious, and un-knots it, settles him back down. Bucky’s mouth stays open, his lips dry and swollen, saliva painting lines up his cheeks where it soaked into the fabric and outward. Steve swipes it away with his fingers. 

He holds Bucky’s arms at the elbow while he undoes the velcro straps, lowers each arm in turn to the bed, and is careful. Bucky knows, distantly, that he should be moving himself, knows distantly that you shouldn’t move someone for them, in case they’re not ready to move, but Steve’s always done this for him.

“Think you’re done?” Steve says, and his voice is soft, and Bucky’s grateful. “Wanna get a little sleep so I can actually get somethin’ done around here?”

“Mmmah loveyou,” Bucky says, his teeth aching a little, his tongue feeling fuzzy from where it was pressed up against fabric.

“I love you too, Sweetheart,” Steve says.

He can’t help but give Steve a soft, “uh,” when Steve draws the machine and its attachment away from Bucky. It’s big and thick and it pulls against flesh turned pliant, and Bucky feels empty without it.

Steve has wipes, and he cleans Bucky off with them, thighs, ass, his balls, anywhere else the lube got.

Bucky sees Steve reach for the chains but there’s warmth under his spine that he recognizes as Steve’s hand, and then his legs are moving, Steve’s supporting his back, holding the chain to lower his legs to the bed. He could have done this for himself at any time but it’s Steve who does it for him now.

Steve undoes the ankle cuffs for him, rubs his ankle bones and the underneath of his feet. They’re sore, he was clenching everything, toes included.

Steve cleans his stomach with the wipes, too, and Bucky’s body flinches when Steve’s gentle fingers wipe the come from his cock.

Steve puts a big, huge, soft marshmallow cloud of a pillow under Bucky’s head and shoulders, another thin one - one of his own - under the small of Bucky’s back for support while his body adjusts to having his legs back down again.

Steve sits him up briefly, gathers Bucky into his arms, across his lap, and tips his head back to feed him Gatorade, then he puts Bucky back down on the bed and picks up a sheet. He doesn’t drag it up over Bucky’s body - it would feel like sandpaper. Instead, he holds two corners and flings it out like a fishing net so that it unfurls in the air over Bucky, descending feather-light until it rests on top of him. His skin sings anyway.

“Might finally get some peace and quiet around here,” Steve says, and Bucky’s eyebrows are still twitching, there’s a muscle in his cheek that hasn’t relaxed and it’s pulling, but he can’t help the smile even though his face aches. 

Steve strokes his palm over Bucky’s hair, and then goes and sits in his chair and reads his book. He’s close enough that he can link his index finger into Bucky’s palm.

Bucky isn’t a jigsaw piece, Steve is not part of a puzzle, they’re not chosen carefully to fit another, cut from a certain cloth or punched with a certain die. They are pieces of something broken, shards of glass that have been shattered, remolten and gathered, pieces of precious work that have been smashed apart and rejoined with gold - not unblemished, not undamaged, but stronger than the terrors they’ve faced. They’ve both been broken, but they were still pulled into existence as a single soul, so long ago, and they’re both better for the other half of it.

**Author's Note:**

> The book Steve’s reading from is  _“Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst”_ by neuroendocrinologist and author Dr Robert Sapolsky.
> 
> Hello to anyone who spotted the Butch and Sundance semi-reference.


End file.
